"We purchased so many [FM850's], because we wanted to be prepared for two stages."

Mike Neal

McCune Audio

McCune Audio, one of California’s top full service technical event production companies, recently purchased 26 new McCauley FM850 low profile, lightweight, 2-way monitor systems. One of the first opportunities to work the FM850s in the field came when McCune provided sound reinforcement for the 30th year at the 2008 Playboy Jazz Festival held June 14-15 at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.

Over the past 30 years at the Playboy Jazz Festival, McCune has had the opportunity to work with such talent as Etta James, Ray Charles, Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, B.B. King, Boz Skaggs and Jamie Cullum. This year’s lineup was equally impressive: Herbie Hancock, Al Jarreau, Guitars & Saxes, Keb’Mo, Poncho Sanchez, Tower of Power and James Moody just to name a few. McCune was quick to state that they were proud to be involved in an event with such a rich history of talent and soul, and have been doing so for the last 15 years.

On purchasing the new monitors, Vice President of McCune Audio, Mike Neal said, “We hadn’t purchased new monitors for a while, and knew it was getting to be about that time. McCune Audio had always used monitors we built ourselves. I’m not sure when they were developed, but I think we’ve been using them since the 1970’s. Our in-house monitors worked beautifully and were quite serviceable, but we felt it was time to replace them.” When the search for replacement monitors began, McCauley’s new FM850 was considered

because they were significantly lighter than other monitors on the market; also they had a similar sound quality to what McCune was already familiar with. “We purchased so many,” continued Mike, “because we wanted to be prepared for two stages. For instance, the Hollywood Bowl uses a revolving stage, so the audience doesn’t have to wait as long for acts throughout the day. We plan to use all of the McCauley monitors for the upcoming Monterey Jazz Festival in September.”

Bill Knight and Matt Chavez from McCune ran the monitor boards for each of the stages at the Hollywood Bowl. When asked about the performance of the monitoring systems, Matt explained “we received no complaints. And if there are no complaints, then everything is good. Although nothing specific was mentioned, we did receive a few complements that everything sounded great. That’s about the best to be expected from a large festival.”

The Playboy Jazz Festival was on June 14th and 15th and the line up included jazz musicians who were well established as well as some new players. Since he started hosting in 1995, Bill Cosby has presented the “Cos of Good Music” where he hand picks musicians to play together for this special segment of the program. This year not only did Cosby direct the musicians, but he jumped on a drum set to jam for a bit.

The Playboy Jazz Festival started in 1959 at Chicago Stadium

as a one time event to celebrate the magazines first 5 years of publication. Twenty years later, Hugh Hefner brought the festival back to the world famous Hollywood Bowl to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Playboy Magazine and since then the event has become annual.